


what's past is prologue (we've the rest of our lives to live)

by Flora_Obsidian



Series: chill radio host times [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Blood and Gore, Fix-It, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Strex Kevin, Strexcorp is Evil, Typical Desert Bluffs Violence, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, not quite as dark as the tags make it sound, pulling this out of my drafts after three years lets gooooooooooo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-13 21:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11194197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flora_Obsidian/pseuds/Flora_Obsidian
Summary: In the aftermath of StrexCorp's takeover, Kevin wakes up. That's the easy part.(a story of learning to live with past actions, and the hopefully-conveyed message that not all is as dismal as it seems)





	what's past is prologue (we've the rest of our lives to live)

**Author's Note:**

> Way, wayyyyyy back when, Old Oak Doors Part B was released and the Night Vale fandom collectively lost its shit. I also lost my shit, as I was very much into Night Vale and interacted a lot with the roleplay community, and sometime around two in the morning in the summer heat, one of the blogs I followed posted this:
> 
> "Kevin comes back clean and he’s the original Kevin from pre strex bluffs and him and Cecil have really chill radio broadcaster times hahahahaha" #:') 
> 
> and I began to write. Then I stopped, because I'm a horrifically slow writer. Then Triptych came out, and the Night Vale fandom collectively lost its shit, and I also lost my shit despite not being a roleplaying blog anymore, and I wrote some more. Then I stopped, for the same reasons as previously mentioned. Then I fell behind on episodes, wasn't really as invested in the fandom, etc, etc, and this thing fell back into the dusty WIPs folder to be forgotten about until I caught some distant mumblings about Night Vale releasing its 100th episode and remembered "oh yeah, that thing that shaped a good chunk of my high school years" and I _still_ haven't caught up yet, but this piece is the first of three
> 
> So. Here's Kevin. This doesn't strictly follow canon from beyond Old Oak Doors ptB, just borrowing here and there, since when I started nothing existed after Old Oak Doors ptB -- Carlos is back from the Desert Otherworld with a vague non-explanation, none of that plot with Hiram and the Faceless Old Woman and Dana is a Thing, Kevin is obviously not still in the Desert Otherworld being sad.

Night Vale is a town of shadows.

It is a town of secrets; it is a town of darkness; it is a town of mystery and of fear. It's people are not perfect. Nothing is perfect, after all, and the people in Night Vale are equally imperfect – but the people of Night Vale are _human_ , unique, individually separate while still all part of one whole, part of the complex structure which makes up the bizarre, gothic haven that Night Vale was, is, and continues to be.

There is Mayor Dana Cardinal, one of many brave souls who helped to drag Night Vale back from the brink of destruction at the will of a Smiling God. Sarah Sultan, graduate of Night Vale Community College and current education activist. Janice Palmer-Carlsberg, young but nevertheless gaining respect as one of the Girl Scouts. Intern Maureen, Leanne Hart, Old Woman Josie, Carlos the Scientist-- so many, many more, so many individuals, so many beautiful, imperfect human beings all with a precious, unique existence.

Cecil Gerswhin Palmer, the Voice of Night Vale and a steadfast presence no matter where and when one happens to be, so long as one has a radio signal. He is not important, as many will try to tell him-- or, well, he was a little bit important, but when one takes into consideration the entirety of the void, is anything _really_ important? He is not important, as many will try to tell him, and he is not perfect, but he is the Voice, and he speaks as Voices are meant to speak, and he makes sure that the town knows what is happening around them even as it happens. Cecil, too, has his own unique existence, and he makes the best of it, entwining his existence with that of Carlos' and turning two existences into one bound by trials and time-- a relationship, after all, is the making of two into one through shared experience.

It is in this realm of mystery and shadows and moons and secrets and fear that things began, and it is in this realm where things will, one day, hypothetically, end. It is in this realm that we will go once more – it is in Night Vale that this story takes place.

Or, more specifically, just outside of Night Vale, in the sand wastes, about twenty feet to the right of a cactus which looks as though it has been given a haircut by a barber with very unsteady hands.

* * *

Cactus June first notices the stranger wandering the wastes. She blinks once, then blinks again, and then she blinks three times in a row in rapid succession, brushing a lock of sun-bleached hair out of her eyes to better peer down from her perch atop a cactus. She peers, and she peers, and then she takes a scrap of paper from her pocket, and a cactus needle from the cactus underneath her, and writers a note in precise Modified Sumerian. She ties the note to a nearby tortoise and turns it in the direction of John Peters (you know, the farmer?), confident that the man can deliver it to Cecil, who should be made aware of this as soon as possible.

Cactus June returns to staring at the stranger, and the stranger does not stare back.

* * *

John Peters, you know, the farmer? He's a simple sort of man, and a simple sort of farmer, and unfortunate enough to have had a mistake made by his parents when it came to the signing of his birth certificate. He isn't especially put out by this bit of his unfortune – everyone is unfortunate eventually, after all, and he's always been of the mind that it's best to get it all out of the way as soon as possible.

He is _very much put out_ by the large, glowing, radioactive cloud which has started to drop dead animals above his farmstead _yet again_ , however, crushing large portions of his crop of imaginary corn. As he has done the last several times this has happened, he climbs to the top of his grain silo to argue with the cloud.

The Glow Cloud tries to drop a dead cow on him. He yells at the Glow Cloud some more.

Something moves in the vicinity of his feet, and he glances down to see a tortoise with a note tied around its shell looking decidedly out of breath. It's wings are drooping – he doesn't blame it, the climb up here was difficult enough for him, much less a tortoise that had to fly the whole way up, avoiding dead mammals dropping from the heavens as it went. The note says “for Cecil” on the top of it, and while on any other day, he knows he'd be glad to deliver it, he has a bone to pick with this cloud. Several bones. A skeleton or two, really.

The turtle goes on his shoulder where it can rest, and the note is folded into a paper airplane before being tossed in the direction of the town center. The Glow Cloud tries to drop another cloud on him, and he opens his mouth to contin u e    yel l      i

_**a l l  h a i  l** _

* * *

****Josie Ortiz, known colloquially to most of Night Vale as Old Woman Josie, likes to go for walks. It's something she enjoys, especially when she has one or more of her angelic friends to keep her company. They make for wonderful conversation, after all-- and, while she can't say she likes to admit it, it's probably best that she has someone with her whenever she's out and about, these days. Her hip never set right after the Street Cleaning Massacre of '62, and while she's quite certain that she isn't going to fall over, it's only common sense to have another being nearby in the improbably hypothetical event that she _does_ take a tumble.

She walks with three of the angels today: Erika who changed the lightbulb for her all those years back, Erika who called the radio station during that mayoral debate, and Erika who bought out that awful Strex company. Josie can't say she likes Strex very much, not when they tried to force her out of her home like that, not when they came after _her town_ \-- awful, _awful_ people! She's glad to see them gone.

Erika – the one who purchased Strex, the one in a hand-tailored coat – reaches up to pluck something out of the air before it can blow fully past them. They pass it to the other two Erikas, and then the three pause briefly to inspect it. Josie stops too; it would be rude to leave them behind.

 _For Cecil,_ says the Erika that changed the lightbulb, taking the letter out of Erika's hand before they can say a word and vanishing in a flash of light.

Both Erikas shrug. Josie smiles and pats their wrists sympathetically (they are very tall, and Josie is very short, and that's about as high as she can reach on the dears), “I suppose it's just the three of us now, hm? Now, where was I... ah! Yes, the opera house, I remember...”

* * *

_Hello, listeners! We have lots of wonderful news for you today! Actually, it's not that wonderful. Actually, there isn't very much of it. It is... a slow day. It is a **very** slow day. We don't have any news._

_Well._

_Carlos and I have been playing with our cat, Pechka, who is growing up to be quite the healthy little guy! He's even living up to his name! You might remember, Khoshekh gave birth to kittens quite some time ago, and Carlos and I adopted one of them. He's so **fluffy** , with this adorable little tendril hub, and you can just see his spine ridges starting to grow in! He--_

_Oh! Oh, well, this is interesting. As it turns out, listeners, we **do** have news! In my quiet little studio here, an... a creature, a **totally non-angelic** creature, suddenly appeared in a flash of light. Their skin is black and their head is long, and there are a pair of great, black wings extending from their back. They... they are holding out their hand to me, and there is something clutched in their long, bony fingers... I do believe they want me to take it, listeners._

_...The moment I took the paper, they vanished. Perhaps they had somewhere to go?_

_Now, to the news. Cactus June has sent in a report from the sand wastes. There is a mysterious stranger wandering through the sandy dunes underneath the blistering sun. His hair is long and brown, and his eyes are bloodshot, and he wears the tattered remains of what appears to be a business suit. He has no shoes. His skin is bronze. He stumbles forward in a wobbly path, trying to move to what lies ahead, but moving nowhere in particular. His hands shake._

_There... there is a post-script at the bottom here, listeners. It reads: “It is strange, Cecil, but if I did not know this was when you began broadcasting, I would have assumed that the man was you.” Underneath is an inky smudge that I must assume acts as a signature._

_This has been an interesting story, listeners, but what is Night Vale without interests? What is **anywhere** without interests? I will give you updates as the news develops. _

_Now, back to the cats..._

* * *

Former Intern Dana, now Mayor Dana Cardinal, always remembers to listen to Cecil's radio broadcasts. She feels she owes it to him, in part, after everything he has done for her, but she also genuinely enjoys them. It makes her happy to hear Cecil happy – and he has been much happier since Carlos returned through the doors.

A small frown crosses over her lips – she is not worried, nor is she concerned, but the idea of a strange man that bears an odd resemblance to Cecil wandering about the desert bothers her, just a little bit. Even if she knows Cecil can handle himself.

(She requests that a member of the Sheriff's Secret Police go and poke around the sand wastes, just in case.)

* * *

_I have been in direct communication with a member of the Sheriff's Secret Police, who was dispatched to the sand wastes by Mayor Dana Cardinal to look into the matter of this new man in town. She has responded through a series of strange static noises, thankfully interpreted by Intern Maureen down in the break room. Evidently, she has been following a trail of footsteps for quite some time, the spiraling path leading vaguely in the direction of Hidden Gorge, and finally found the man lying in the shade of the cactus and staring at his hands._

_The man did not answer when asked his name, nor did he give any response when asked as to why he was wandering through the outskirts of town. He did, however, continue to stare at his hands, prodding at one slim finger with another and whispering “solid” over and over again, so we may tentatively conclude that he is suffering from the same existential crises we also have every so often. You know how it is, listeners._

_The man has been taken to Night Vale Community Hospital, where he will be given the proper treatment for dehydration and prolonged sun exposure. More updates to follow as they come in._

* * *

Light.

_A small desert community where the sun is hot--_

Voices.

_\--the moon is irrelevant--_

Light?

_\--and we are light, and light, and--_

No. Make it go away. It burns. Make it go away. Make the light go away.

What is wrong with the moon? The moon is--

 _\--light_.

* * *

Carlos tries to make it a habit to meet Cecil outside the radio station when he finishes with his broadcasts. He knows when Cecil finishes the broadcast because he listens to the broadcast every single time it's on. Generally, about halfway through the broadcast, he'll carry the portable radio he keeps in his lab out to the car, turn the car on, turn the car radio on, turn the portable radio off, then listen to the rest of the broadcast on the drive over. It's an efficient system, and he writes up an algorithm one day to check _exactly_ how efficient it is (it's pretty efficient, scientifically speaking).

He meets Cecil outside the radio station that day, and his boyfriend smiles widely.

“I love you!” he announces.

“I love you too,” Carlos says with a smile of his own.

That's another habit they're slowly coming into.

“Did you want to go and check on that strange man they found in the sand wastes?” Carlos asks. “Scientifically speaking, he probably isn't you, but this _is_ Night Vale, and we've already had incidents with our doubles before.”

Cecil shrugs, the two walking over to Carlos' car. “I don't see the harm it could do. Do you want to stop by Arby's afterward?”

“I'd love to!”

* * *

His name is Kevin.

Maybe.

He _thinks_ his name is Kevin.

What's in a name, anyway?

There are memories of yellow, and memories of orange, and memories of red red _red_ , and terrible smiles, and blinding light, and the world falling apart around him. He wants to think it can't be real, because nothing that terrible could possibly be _real_ , but he catches a glimpse of his own face in the reflective surface of a window and shudders, because he remembers that he was one of the ones smiling.

Someone hands him water. He stares at it, unsure of why he has it, until a voice he does not know reminds him to drink. Of course. What else would be done with water...?

He drinks.

A voice he does not know asks his name.

His past is such a painful, jumbled mess, and he just doesn't _know,_ but Kevin feels right. The name seems right to him, and it is the only thing that seems right in a world that feels so very very _wrong_.

He blinks at the cup of water, and looks at the two voices. Doctors, going by their coats. The thought makes something in the back of his mind cringe in fear for reasons he cannot explain and does not care to contemplate.

“My name is Kevin,” he says, and quickly takes another sip of the water, because his voice sounds _awfully_ parched. He's in radio, you know, and a radio host's voice must be clear and bright at all times. Anything otherwise is unacceptable. “Could you tell me where I am?”

“You're in Night Vale,” one replies.

Night Vale. Wasn't he supposed to be--

_Terrible smiles. Terrible light._

\--in Desert Bluffs?

* * *

“Hi, Rachel!” Cecil waves cheerfully to one of the nurses, currently off-duty, other hand linked with Carlos'. “Carlos and I just wanted to check in on that man found wandering the sand wastes earlier today, is he doing all right?”

Rachel's lips curve up in a gentle, kind smile, and she waves fondly back at Cecil and his science fella. “I overheard the doctors saying he'd fallen asleep not too long ago, but he'd been wandering around for a while, poor guy. Had to through his clothes in with the rest of the medical disposal to be burned next time Mr. McDaniels gets stressed out, they were so badly ripped up.”

“Did he really look that much like Cecil?” Carlos asks. “Statistically, there are only forty people in the world who bear a resemblance to you which could be considered exact...”

“Oh, he did, yes! His hair was about the same length, same color, and he wasn't really tall or short, but I guess he was about your height. His eyes were that green kind of hazel, though, yours are brown.”

“Ah, well!” Cecil shrugs cheerfully. He's the kind of man who can pull off a cheerful shrug, Rachel thinks. A cheerful shrug while wearing bright pink short-shorts and a floral-print blouse. Cecil can pull off a lot of things other people can't – she _wishes_ she could rock that kind of outfit. “I'm glad he's all right.”

“Same here, Cecil. Oh, how are the rest of Khoshekh's kittens doing? You mentioned them in the broadcast!”

“Oh, they're lovely, I painted some watercolors of them and then took photos of the paintings, let me find them...”

The three talk for quite a while, as people are apt to do. Carlos occasionally throws in a scientific comment or three, which delights Cecil to no end. Rachel just looks between the two of them, and like most of the town, agrees that they were meant to be. She finally shoos them off when Cecil's stomach growls, and apologizes profusely for keeping them away from dinner, and why didn't they _say_ anything?

“Don't worry, Rachel, it wasn't a bother.”

They're almost out the door when Rachel calls after them. “Hey, Cecil, Carlos! That fellow they found out in the sand wastes, he says his name is Kevin.”

* * *

Kevin leaves Night Vale Community Hospital the next day with a mandatory orange poncho and a cane. Regarding the poncho: he isn't a citizen of Night Vale, but he can't remember if he has anywhere he can go beyond the Bluffs, and when he mentions the Bluffs, the two doctors just shake their heads in unison and say in a low, low tone, _no one goes to Desert Bluffs anymore, son_. Still, from what he can tell, Night Vale is used to taking people in without warning – and equally used to spitting them back out – so he wanders aimlessly through the streets and doesn't spare a second glance from passerby. He's just another individual human being with his own unique identity, the doctors tell him as they send him on his way.

...He'd be more reassured if these individualist ideals of Night Vale didn't seem to clash with what feels like an ingrained belief in potential and corporate production.

Regarding the cane: he does not know what happened to him, or he does not  _want_ to know what happened to him, or possibly some mix of both (he does not want to know the answer to this mystery, either), but he is battered and scarred. One of his legs refuses to bend the way it's supposed to, and while he thinks he can walk just fine without an aid, the doctors insist. Therefore, cane.

He spent the night in the hospital, and it's early morning, now. He can remember something about the sun, and something about the sunrise, but one is beautiful and one is terrifying, and he isn't sure which is which. Kevin sits down on a curb, flexing his fingers back and forth and watching them bend with such a marvelous fluidity-- that's how everyone's hands works, he feels like _that_ much should be obvious, but when he thinks of hands, he thinks of bones, and teeth, and blood.

There is a young girl wheeling herself down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the road. She wears a brightly patterned skirt and has immensely curly hair, and she seems quite happy, if a bit frustrated with the state of the path before her. Such is the way of life. The whole town, Kevin has noticed, seems like it is recovering from... from? Buildings are being rebuilt, and streets are being repaved, and it all looks as though something terrible has ripped through the community with no heed for anything in its path. He settles down on a section of curbstone still reasonably intact with the poncho in his lap and the cane at his side and one leg stretched out before him and watches.

There is a building down the road with a huge sign reading “Arby's”. He sees signs pointing to the Town Hall, and to the local drawbridge, and to the waterfront. The girl continues to wheel her wheelchair down the sidewalk, sometimes backing up to go around one of the concrete slabs which has risen up too high to safely navigate over.

He hears rustling. Looks up. Flinches.

The creature is tall, perhaps ten feet in height, perhaps twelve. They have many eyes, and their fingers are long and slender and bony and _pointed_. A pair of massive wings are fully extended from their back, and from Kevin's position on the ground they all but blot out the sun.

He scuttles away from the angel. Angels are dangerous _, dangerous--_

But the angel only slowly lowers their wings, folding them back up against their back. Another angel comes to their side – while the first one wears a robe of sorts, the second has a comfortable looking sweater with a purple _E_ on the front. It looks as though it was knit by hand. Then a third appears, totally nude save for a hand-tailored suit coat and an expensive looking phone. Then a fourth – this one is black, and also wears a sweater.

Kevin is decidedly frightened.

“What do you _want_ with me?” he demands, voice still parched and sounding _off_.

 _Eh... you know. Whatever._ The angel with the phone shrugs.

 _Be silenced, Erika,_ says the black angel. _We are concerned._

“O-okay...?” Kevin's voice squeaks.

 _No, that's all,_ says the angel in the sweater. _We are concerned._

And they continue to loom over him in silence until another voice shows up. Kevin could cry from relief.

“Erika? Erika, where are you? Erika? Ah, Erika! Do slow down, dears, I haven't been able to walk that fast since my hip replacement, you know...” An old lady comes shuffling down the road. She has thick glasses and wrinkled skin and a little knobbly cane in her hands, and her eyes and smile are kind. She waves briefly to the little girl on the opposite side of the road, who is almost around the corner, and the little girl waves back.

The angels – all of whom are evidently named Erika...? – step aside. The woman looks at Kevin. Kevin looks back at the woman.

“You're the boy they found in the sand wastes, aren't you?” The old woman smiles again, and shuffles over. “Oh, no need to look so frightened, the Erikas are all quite nice, and I'm just a little old lady. You look exhausted, dear, come on, why don't you come over, I was just about to make some scones...”

And she looks so expectant that Kevin slowly gets to his feet, slower than he might with cane in hand, and walks next to her and the angels named Erika until they get back to a house Kevin finds eerily familiar. He thinks about helicopters, shivers despite the desert heat.

 _We are concerned,_ the angels repeat multiple times on the way there.

The black angel looks at Kevin with those many sets of piercing eyes, holding the door open for the woman (her name, as it turns out, is Josie) and the other angels. He has a brief thought, that the angel could only possibly become more terrifying if it had a lightbulb, but the fear is replaced very quickly by confusion, because lightbulbs aren't terrifying.

Right?

“Thank you,” he murmurs, skirting past the angel and pressing himself up against one of the walls so he's as far away from them as possible.

* * *

Josie gives him a guest bedroom to sleep in, but Kevin doesn't sleep. He sits at the window in a ray of moonshine and looks at his reflection in one of the glass panes and tries to piece together his fractured thoughts.

“My name is Kevin,” he whispers, watching his lips form the words and thinking about how strange his voice sounds still. “I work at Desert Bluffs Community Radio. Or, worked? And then?”

He remembers his dear little town, and Intern Vanessa, and someone whose face no longer exists in his mind but for a smile. He remembers some company edging their way into town, buying up small businesses under the guise of keeping them afloat... and then? And then?

_Burning light._

_Endless desert._

_Twisting spiral._

_Orange triangles._

_**Smiling god.** _

* * *

****Cecil is not concerned, nor is he worried. He is beyond both of those things and verging into full-out panic, pacing rapidly back and forth in the living room of his shared apartment with Carlos, located near the Ralph's. His tattoos appear to glitch, trailing an inch or three behind him and continuing on for a few moments after he turns abruptly on his heel to walk in the opposite direction, just barely clinging to his skin with translucent, inky tendrils.

“It can't be him,” he repeats for the forty-ninth time (Carlos has been keeping track).

“When we take probability into account, Cecil, it probably is,” Carlos replies quietly, sitting on the sofa and fiddling with a new scientific device created to measure the level of radiation the Glow Cloud releases.

“Well, _obviously_ , who else could it be?!”

Cecil is upset. Carlos doesn't blame him – he was in the Desert Otherworld when Kevin of Desert Bluffs and Lauren Mallard began their broadcasting, and Cecil doesn't like to talk about his time spent at the Company Picnic, nor the days just before Strex really moved in. Cecil rarely says what happened during that time, and Carlos never asks, but Carlos still has a pair of eyes that work quite nicely, and bloodstains are difficult to remove when the bloodstains equate to an entire radio station. Kevin does not sound like the kind of person anyone would ever want to meet, and yet Cactus June was concerned enough to send a message to the station, and the hospital had nothing to say beyond their usual mutterings about ghostly possession, and they now know Old Woman Josie is letting Kevin stay at her house.

Josie is one of the nicest old ladies Carlos has met, even if she does converse daily with beings that do not legally exist and has a great deal of eccentricities (it's Night Vale, things are eccentric by definition). If she is helping Kevin and the angels are okay with it, it stands to reason, scientifically, that Kevin should be given the benefit of the doubt.

“Cecil, sit down.”

Something in Carlos' voice stops Cecil in his tracks, and his tattoos slowly faze back into place. The radio host takes a couple of deep breaths, and joins his boyfriend on the couch.

“I know this is something of a stretch, but-- hear me out?”

Cecil sighs. He takes Carlos' hand and squeezes it. “Okay.”

“You said that Kevin-- Kevin, the one you knew, that Steve Carlsberg threw through the oak doors-- his eyes were black. Like void.”

Cecil's face contorts rather oddly, torn between horror at the thought of Kevin, disgusted irritation at Steve Carlsberg, and pain at the mention of the doors. They called one another every night, and sometimes twice a night when time went screwy, when Carlos was trapped in the desert, and eventually he invented a way to come back, but that time spent apart was not a pleasant memory. Then he nods.

“Worse,” he says with a shudder. “Void, but-- these _holes_ , no eyes at all. And everyone said he looked like me, which-- well, _maybe_ he did, aside from being completely different.”

Carlos sighs, echoing Cecil's from moments before. “I don't know what's going on here any more than you do-- and that's frustrating, I _like_ knowing what's going on. But people are saying this Kevin looks like you, and they haven't been afraid of him at all, and Josie and the Erikas trust him. His eyes are hazel. Cecil... maybe you should go and speak to Kevin yourself.”

* * *

Kevin helps Josie make scones the first day he stays at her house, eats them with her and the Erikas at the kitchen table. Josie talks about the Old Night Vale Opera House and her plans to rebuild it, and she smiles a lot, but it's a kind smile.

What kind of smile _wouldn't_ be kind?

He goes back to the room that Josie gave him to rest and stays there for the entire day. He stays up all night thinking, and goes downstairs when he hears Josie puttering around to help her with breakfast. They have pancakes and butter and syrup, and the angels eat with them. There are more angels than there were yesterday when they were eating scones, and they make him uncomfortable, but not as much as before. They're... majestic, in a way.

One of the smallest angels flaps over to him and starts petting his hair, making a warbling noise that Kevin thinks might be the equivalent of a purr. Josie beams at him and starts putting the dishes away. Kevin sits very, very still and lets the angel keep petting his head, and definitely does not whimper in fear when it chirps and hops around a bit, grabs some twist ties off the counter, and starts braiding his hair.

* * *

Kevin is sitting up in the room Josie gave him when he hears a sound like several chickens trying to sing opera. This, he decides, is probably the doorbell, and he listens to Josie putter over to the front door and start talking happily at whoever has decided to visit. There is the sound of another voice, a man's voice, low and kind.

One of the Erikas fazes through Kevin's door, and he jumps. The angel just looks at him with its many eyes and accidentally knocks its head on the ceiling fan. It wears a green sweater with a big yellow _E_.

 _Visitor,_ they say concisely, and faze right back through the door again.

Kevin stands up. He's wearing an old pair of jeans and a long-sleeved tunic which feel out of place and equally in place at the same time. He feels _under-_ _d_ _ressed_ , as though he ought to be wearing a suit, or a vest, or a tie.

He opens the door and walks down the stairs. Erika in the green sweater is waiting impatiently, and makes a string of clicking noises in the back of their throat.

“Kevin!” Josie says cheerfully when she sees him. “I'm going to go and make some tea, but you have a visitor.”

She pats him on the elbow – Josie is very short, and Kevin is neither short or tall, but still tall compared to Josie – and goes off to the kitchen.

Kevin looks at his reflection, and his reflection glares back.

“ _You_ ,” his reflection growls. He wears furry, fluffy pants and a purple tunic, and his hair is longer than Kevin's, but _oh_ , do they look the same.

“My name is Kevin,” Kevin says softly, and he tilts his head to one side. The man has brown eyes. Kevin thinks his eyes might have been brown (that's what he remembers, at least) but when he looks in the mirror they are such a light color of hazel they could be called gold. Gold like the light of the sun. _Bleached_ _bone_ _under the light of the sun--_ “You... you're Cecil, aren't you?”

There's a stabbing pain in his head, now, a headache sprung from nowhere. His reflection watches him warily, still on the defensive, still glaring.

“It is,” he says.

“I'm... I'm sorry, if we've met before...” Kevin sits down, and he _remembers_ meeting this man before, revolutions and a child with a slingshot, a radio station, and _revolution bad bad bad_ _ **blood**_ and men named Shaun. He remembers a firm pat on the neck (empathy?) and hug- _not-hug_ -hug and smiles _-not-smiling_ \--

 _Breathe_.

“I'm afraid I don't remember much before the sand wastes... You _do_ look an awful lot like me, though.”

Cecil stares at him with narrowed eyes, arms crossed over his chest, but that's the moment that Josie putters right back along in, carrying a tray of glasses filled to the brim with sweet iced tea. The Erikas all trail along behind her, settling down on the arms of couches or on the lamp in the corner or on the backs of chairs. The littlest Erika perches itself on Kevin's shoulders, humming and starting to braid his hair again.

“I'm glad you boys are getting along!” Josie says brightly, and after that they _have_ to be civil to one another (though Cecil apparently hates him and Kevin doesn't know who Cecil is) because when Josie says something, you can't really go against it.

* * *

The first few nights Kevin sleeps, when he _does_ sleep, that is, his dreams are troubled.

His dreams are troubled, but he cannot make out any distinct shapes. There are no images to be frightened of, no voices that he can tie faces to, no faces that he can tie names to. Thus, the first few nights Kevin sleeps, while his dreams are troubled, he sleeps the whole night through.

The fourth night he sleeps, he dreams with painful clarity, and when he wakes he is sobbing and he _remembers_.

* * *

He leaves Josie's house when he has calmed down enough to breathe properly and _think_. That takes some time; alone, in the dark, mind whirling and heart beating like it's trying to crawl out of his chest and head spinning with nausea and bile clogging up his throat, and he hardly remembers his name.

But he breathes, he _breathes_ , and some time later he's wandering the streets in the dim light of a new day until he sees a group that's helping pick up the pieces of Night Vale after the invasion of StrexCorp Synernists Incorporated. He hesitantly walks up and asks what he can do to help, and the townspeople wave their arms around them.

“Clear the roadways,” they all say in unison, shrugging in groups of four. “The deer like having an open area to practice in.”

Why deer need to practice _anything_ is much of a mystery, as they are only deer, and deer are very dumb animals, but he accepts the task as a distraction and doesn't question it. Kevin begins picking up pieces of debris from the roadway and tossing it into the nearby rip in time and space. Handy waste disposal, certainly.

The people he works with talk and laugh and joke around, though Kevin is mostly lost in his thoughts and letting his hands work of their own accord. His tattoos writhe underneath his sleeves and create fractal patterns across his skin and he tries not to look down the road, where less than a block away construction workers are dismantling the volleyball nets (electrified fences) which used to contain the attendees (prisoners) of the Company Picnic (labor camp).

* * *

Kevin settles into a routine at Josie's house. He helps her with the chores and they talk together and eat meals together, and he's not _quite_ as scared of the angels as he used to be. The angels all seem to be warming up to him, as well.

He goes out daily to help Night Vale pick themselves back up again, understanding the strange sense of guilt and _obligation_ he feels now that he... remembers...

(he does not remember entirely, but he remembers enough – he remembers his hands red with blood not his own, and he remembers killing others for the sheer _enjoyment_ of it all, and while he cannot remember much of anything before a blinding pain, he remembers enough to wish he was able to forget all over again)

Months pass. During one of his breaks (he can take breaks now, and the word _productivity_ leaves a foul taste in his mouth), two girls walk up to him. One is a girl in a wheelchair. The other has scraped knees and elbows and what looks to be a severed hand hanging around her neck.

“Excuse me, mister!” the girl in the wheelchair says cheerfully, smiling far too _kindly_ , no one should look at him like that _he doesn't deserve_ \-- “Tamika and I were playing with a Frisbee, but it got caught up in one of the branches of a tree in the Whispering Forest.”

“I left my slingshot at home,” the girl wearing the hand says. “Otherwise I could get it down easily.”

Kevin slowly stands, and slowly walks with the girls to the Whispering Forest (who whisper to him that he has nice eyes) while they chatter away, and gets their Frisbee back for them.

“Thanks, mister!” the girl in the wheelchair says, ever-cheerful. The girl wearing the hand waves as they head back to wherever they were playing before.

Kevin returns to the street he was working at and begins tossing debris into the void.

* * *

Janice throws the Frisbee to Tamika, who catches it with ease. Tamika throws it back, and Janice catches it with an equal amount of ease.

“So, that was Kevin?” she asks Tamika.

Tamika nods, glancing back down the road. “I've learned many things from the books I have read. One of these things is that a person is always changing. Past actions cannot be excused, but they do not wholly define who a person is in the present. I do not like who Kevin was, and I probably will not like who he _is_... but regardless, he is only human, and all humans change. Maybe he's changing for the better.”

* * *

Cecil has been given the job of watching Janice today, something he enjoys doing immensely. He glares at Kevin's retreating back, but does not say a word.

* * *

It is night. The moon is full and makes the room glow silver, and Kevin is too scared to fall asleep.

He had dreamed again last night. He remembers, now, some of the names of people he knows, some of the names of people he once knew.

_Embrace your full productive potential!_

His grandmother's name had been Jezebel-- he's reminded of her whenever he talks with Josie, come to think. She had been very hardworking, never afraid to speak her mind, and loved embroidering her favorite sayings on lace pillows that she would then hang on the wall or place lovingly on the couch. When StrexCorp had bought out her doctor's office, they gave her some new medications, and she had smiled a lot more but spoke a lot less, and her stitches became sloppy and her eyes had grown cloudy with mist.

“Embrace your full productive potential, Al,” she said, patting Kevin's cheek as she called him the name of his father, dead more than twenty years. Her needle slipped through the fabric and skin and muscle and sinew, pulling a glittering thread along behind it. “Hard work, that's the secret.”

_A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is irrelevant_

Lauren had been his supervisor. He can't recall what she looks like, but he remembers her smiling and a tone of voice that made his hair stand on end. She painted her nails, he remembers that, too. She painted them red, painted her nails red, her fingers red, her hands dripping red drip drip drip from her hands to the slick floor--

_and we are light and light and light_

There had been another smile. Teeth in even white rows, a gentle upward curve of lips, a bright light in cheerful eyes. Thick black curls with just a touch of premature gray around the temples. Kevin thinks about it and feels relaxed, but he also remembers that the smile, at some point, went away, and he fears that if he falls asleep again he'll remember why.

He doesn't want to remember why. The thought of trying makes his stomach churn and bile rise up in his throat.

_Look around you. Strex._

_Look inside you. Strex._

_Go to sleep._

Something brushes his arm, and he startles with a choked gasp, but it's just the littlest Erika, humming quietly and tilting their head to one side. They have seven eyes, three in rows down either side of their face and one directly in the middle of their forehead, all milky white, and all seven blink at him in concern.

_Strex._

“I'm okay.” He tries for a smile, but the idea of smiling also makes him sick. “Aren't you supposed to be sleeping?”

_It is--_

Erika warbles at him and pokes his forehead with a small, bony finger,

* * *

When Kevin wakes up, he has slept the whole night through without dreams, and the littlest Erika is curled at his feet, wings draped over both itself and his lower body like a blanket. The black Erika is standing in the corner, looming above them both but not in a menacing way, and Kevin gets the impression that they are smiling at him.

He doesn't believe in blessings from a higher power-- the Smiling God is real, void help them all, but anything given from it is far from a blessing-- but he has the angels' favor, he thinks. That's... nice.

**Author's Note:**

> Note that this is part of a series! I have pieces of a second work written in which Kevin and Cecil and Carlos learn to get along more than they do here, and pieces of a third work written in which some Things Happen at Desert Bluffs and we actually get to the "chill radio host times" portion of this whole thing. So, if you're interested in any of that, follow the series to know when future updates happen!
> 
> As always, thank you very much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed. For more writerly type things, come follow me on Tumblr @floraobsidian


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